The applicability of the information and communication technologies, especially mobile devices, to augmentative and alternative communication is relatively recent in Portugal. Their characteristics of universality and portability allow to access information, communicate through voice, image and writing, working, perform recreational activities and multiple others activities almost anywhere and any place. It also promotes skills development in people with special educational needs, like physical, cognitive and social skills, when using the appropriate adaptations and digital augmentative and alternative communication software or other applications adapted to their physical or sensory disabilities. The aim of this work is to reveal the state of the art about the use of information and communication technologies in the context of special educational and more specifically in augmentative and alternative communication in Portugal, supported on the literature review. We selected the Portal B-on – Online Knowledge Library, since it allows us to have a perspective of several databases repositories of scientific research. This literature review aim to analyze, summarize and interpret some studies carried out in Portugal that focus on the binomial: Information and Communications Technologies and children with Special Education Needs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of the use of new information and communication technologies to the democratic process in the light of democratic and constitutional theory verify that the policies of digital inclusion in rural Federal Government are democratic and constitutional. For this, the thesis will use the line-critical methodology, and research the type-legal and historical literature. The way to exercise citizenship in the public sphere is extremely important for the conduct of relations between human beings and their fellow citizens, and can contribute to reducing social inequalities and social exclusion. And during each historical period, techniques or technologies of information and communication were not only support for the spread of knowledge, but to bring together groups that had converging interests, be they articulated for the realization of the public, private or common interest. The concentration of these techniques or technologies by a small group of society causes imbalance in the social life, since it is the latent power of manipulation that accompanies the use of these means of transmission of the language.; O objetivo da presente dissertação é analisar os impactos da utilização das novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação para o processo democrático...

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a potentially revolutionary means of empowering the poor. Realizing this potential will require investments that increase access to ICTs in remote low productivity areas and the development of innovative applications that cater to the needs of the poor and small firms. The costs of these kinds of investment have been decreasing rapidly, but still yield low short term private returns. The private sector cannot alone be expected to underwrite the costs of these developments. If Government does not support these public investments, economic disparities will rise, undermining social stability and future growth. Effective public sector action is required, to establish a regulatory and legal framework that enables the rise of a vibrant innovative competitive private telecommunications and ICT services sector, and to institute selective efficient and transparent public subsidies with high social payoff but low financial returns. This is needed most urgently precisely in developing country contexts where public institutions are often ineffective, corrupt and unaccountable. The challenge takes added significance in Indonesia, a country still recovering from severe economic and political crisis...

Raising the productivity of smallholders
is a necessary condition for increasing incomes and
improving livelihoods among the rural poor in most
developing countries. This increased productivity is
essential to both household food security and to
agriculture-based growth and poverty reduction in the larger
economy. Smallholder productivity is limited by a variety of
constraints including poor soils, unpredictable rainfall,
and imperfect markets, as well as lack of access to
productive resources, financial services, or infrastructure.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are also
vitally important to commercial and large-scale agriculture,
and to agriculture-related services and infrastructure such
as weather monitoring and irrigation. This note focuses on
the sometimes less-obvious importance of ICT in improving
the information, communication, transaction, and networking
elements of smallholder agriculture in developing countries.

Information and communication
technologies (ICTs) are increasingly seen as integral to the
development process. This paper reviews some of the evidence
for the link between telecommunications and the Internet and
economic growth, the likely impact of the new ICTs on income
inequality and anecdotal evidence regarding the role of the
Internet in improving government services and governance. It
looks at methods to maximize access to the new ICTs, and
improve their development impact both in promoting income
generation and the provision of quality services.

Information and communication
technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold
great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by
strengthening five critical pillars of a health system:
human resources for health, supply chain management, health
care financing, governance and service delivery, and
infrastructure. This report describes the changing landscape
of eHealth initiatives through these five pillars, with a
geographic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This report further
details seven criteria, or prerequisites, that must be
considered and addressed in order to effectively establish
and scale up ICT-based solutions in the health sector. These
criteria include infrastructure, data and interoperability
standards, local capacity, policy and regulatory
environments, an appropriate business model, alignment of
partnerships and priorities, and monitoring and evaluation.
In order to bring specific examples of these criteria to
light, this report concludes with 12 specific case studies
of potentially scalable ICT-based health care solutions
currently being implemented across the globe at community...

Development of information and communication technologies (ICT) deeply affected our lives. ICT revolution in the second half of the 20111 century transformed the way we communicate and transfer information. As a result ICT were incorporated into governance and notion of e-governance emerged. Digital diplomacy emerged as a continuum of the ICT revolution in the conduct of diplomacy. With the popularisation of new media, social networks, smartphones and
other latest internet-based tools, diplomacy moved into a new domain of digital affairs. Thus digital diplomacy is simply defined as use of new ICT tools in order to achieve diplomatic goals. The paper starts by examining how international affairs have been affected by advancements in the ICT industry. It discusses major challenges and benefits foreign services have to face in this highly technological world. It is concluded that ICT has helped states to run their
communications with a larger audience in a much faster and cost-effective ways. But at the same time state borders has been blurred, large numbers of emerging actors in international relations have made it difficult to manage the communications and more importantly digitalisation of state affairs has put government networks under threat of cyberattacks or simply hacking. The first chapter tries to depict the large scale of the ICT revolution and its impact on world affairs. Furthermore...

Information and communication
technologies provide the basis for increasing and applying
knowledge in the private and public sectors. Countries with
strong information infrastructures that employ innovative
information technology applications, have many advantages
for sustained economic growth and social development. This
book is, primarily, a business strategy which explains the
World Bank's role in the development of information
infrastructure. It details a plan for expanding the
institutional development capacity within the World Bank and
in the regions in order to successfully implement this
strategy. This book also discusses issues relating to
information technology quality assurance and improving the
World Bank's capacity to ensure such quality.

Technological innovation drives economic
progress. Information and communication technologies (ICT)
can be leveraged for development, but harnessing this
potential depends on an enabling environment for their
production, diffusion, and use. Otherwise, technology can
widen rather than narrow existing inequalities. Over the
past decade developing countries have seen rapid but uneven
growth in ICT access and use. The unprecedented spread of
mobile technologies, driven by private sector investment and
supported by reforms to promote competition, enabled the
growth of phone services for the underserved and poor to
levels unseen before. But outside mobile telephony, large
gaps exist in high-speed Internet access and broadband
connectivity and in the diffusion and use of ICT in
business, services, and government the areas where ICT can
deliver the largest developmental impacts. The World Bank
Group's strategy has sought development results in ICT
by promoting (i) sector reform, (ii) access to information
infrastructure...

This study aimed at verifying the use of social networks by Brazilian university students that belong to the Internet Generation (IG), as well as setting the profile of this generation concerning the use of the Digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Thus, a descriptive research, using the data collection technique via web was carried out. The sample was composed by 928 students from different graduation courses all over Brazil, including the greatest areas of knowledge. An investigative questionnaire was used, having an encoded link to the research sent to the students by e-mail. The results showed that the social networks are the modus operandi of the IG. Most of these individuals use at least two social networks with a daily frequency of some academic activities, of leisure and work. The essential condition for this Internet Generation is to be connected. The engagement of the generation in Brazil in political and civic issues as well as in socializing is still poor when compared to the possibilities offered by the ICTs present in social networks.; http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1807-9288.2014v10n1p4Este estudo procurou verificar a utilização das redes sociais pelos universitários brasileiros, considerados pertencentes à Geração Internet (GI)...